Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Methanoid on May 28, 2004, 11:46:43 AM
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I'm sure people are aware of the Access Amiga clone designed by Mick Tinker. This was basically an A1200 on a card that fitted in a PC 5.25 bay.
Now, run with this as an idea.
Take the design, tweak it slightly for size (so it fits mini-ITX cases like the Shuttle series). Remove the ISA slot.
Q1: How hard would it be to take a PCI design LIKE Mediator/Prometheus and put that in for 2 slots?
Q2: Would it be worth replacing the Mouse port & Keyboard with PS2 versions. There are free designs out there which work and allow 2 joysticks still connected.
Q3: Put FF/SD circuitry onboard so that you had 31.2khz output rather than 15.6 TV modes.
Q4: Would it just be easier to FIND the AntiGravity guy and get the Boxer design off him. You cannot ask Mick Tinker about Boxer as he signed (and is honouring) an NDA. If AntiGravity went bust and it was a company then the rights might be owned by some liquidator but if it was an individual then they still might belong to them but are probably worthless now.
Q5: CPU - Access ran an 030... 28mhz, you could change crystals and perhaps go as high as 56mhz but 060 is a big redesign. Brings you back to Q4!
You may wonder why I am bothering - I am not interested in the slightest in AmigaOne. I suspect there are lots of likeminded people. AmigaClassic is THE only Amiga for me.
Discuss/Rant/Dismiss as you choose!
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Cheaper to get a 1Ghz x86 Mini-ITX, and run Amithlon/WinUAE on it. The x86 Mini-ITX would be more powerful, more reliable and faster too.
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A 680x0 ITX board would both be expensive and low-performance. Motorola/Freescale are concentrating on PowerPC and ColdFire, so there aren't any price reductions to be made for the processors you'll want to use.
Adding controllers and so on is fair enough, you need a PCI bridge to interface with the CPU and then you can throw any old (PCI, not Hypertransport) Southbridge on it.
The flickerfixer, due to the design of PLL circuitry and the precision they need to employ, is going to cost a lot of money. Those ones you can already get for your Amiga cost £70 for a very very good reason.
I suppose the best equipped people to discuss this with would be Elbox or the Coldfire-Amiga guy (www.cdtv.org.uk?) but I suspect both will tell you that you are on crack.
Just buy a Pegasos or an AmigaOne. The former is £269.99 including tax and UK shipping at http://www.pegasos.co.uk :)
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Methanoid wrote:
You may wonder why I am bothering - I am not interested in the slightest in AmigaOne. I suspect there are lots of likeminded people. AmigaClassic is THE only Amiga for me.
Ayep. Thought as much. And why is the classic design 'THE only Amiga for you'? Because of the hardware? Then why bother redesigning it to fit into an mini-ITX form factor when there is nothing worthwhile to expand the system with? Why bother putting a Mediator, PS/2 ports, 31 kHz video output and a lousy 50 MHz 68060 on it when the obvious solution is to simply stick to what is already here, has all the features you desire (with a CPU ten times as fast), and has been shown to work, i.e. A1 or Peg2?
My point is that people should at bloody long last accept that the classic Amiga hardware is dead. You can still use the machine, and if it does what you want and you're happy with it, great. Hope you have a good time. A redesign might have worked in 1994. It won't in 2004. Asking for it is a pointless and futile excercise: people are not interested, it's too expensive, and doesn't remove the machines inherent limitations which are becoming a grating nuisance.
Helpful hint: on amigaworld.org, a nostalgic article has appeared about migrating to a Peg2 and leaving behind the 'true' Amiga. Perhaps you should read it and ponder about it for a while.
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I agree with the above, and I wrote that leaving the Amiga for a Peg article! If you want clasic hardware, then just use wahts out. Its pointless to make something "new" based on old custom chips that are not made any longer and use a CPU thats so out of date then emulation core from UAE and the MorphOS/OS4 is faster and seems to work better.
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I had a look at the article and the "official" Pegasos website and guess what... you cannot buy the motherboard.
All a bit pointless then isnt it?
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I believe some dealers still have the boards. Unfortuantly the Pegasos at the moment seems to be limited to runs done every 15th of a month after a bunch of preorders have been filled.
Even with that limit on production, chances are you'd get a Pegasos (or AmigaOne) much faster then it would take to design and build a new Amiga classic in ITX form factor... Not to mention find a source of AGA chips. ;)
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if you like real amiga architecture then check out the coldfire project
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@Neko
No, there really isn't a good reason for those scandoublers costing so much. Find an external RCA->VGA box on the web, like for an Xbox or PS2, costs 60 bucks, even very nice ones, some even accept rgb input. I saw one on sale, 4 input switcher to VGA (60Hz) 42.95USD. In EU I suppose it'd work very well with an amiga Scart adaptor (would work with that in US too, just have to import the adaptor and vga box)
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Yes you can get them, just not directly from Genesi is all. Look at the dealers and get in touch with one. Several have boards still.
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I don't see that much use in a new 68k "classic" because of the lack of really improved performance compared with existing "classic" Amigas.
But something I'd indeed consider cool and lacking besides Pegasos/A1 would be a true Amiga home computer again - not necessarily a high-end PPC CPU but some "custom" hardware on-board already for certain multimedia capabilities.
Would be no device to change to for current desktop users, obviously - but given the AmigaOS's intuitiveness and user-friendlyness, it might be a nice machine for those who don't own a computer yet and wouldn't use it for much more than writing a letter or club magazine besides the board's multimedia stuff.
To put it in a nutshell: while we do have already continued the x000 Amiga models by the Pegasos and A1, also having a x00 Amiga again would be nice, IMHO, too.
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The problem is that most clueless people that get their first computer, buy the fastest machine available on the
market, getting ripped off quite easily.
A home computer wouldn't cut it in the specific age, the MHz age...
In some years maybe.
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Actually, such a product might be useful as a replacement motherboard that would fit in a variety of old Amiga cases. It could use old 68020s and/or 68040s pulled from ancient trashed Macs, along with old Paula and CIA chips (which never changed throughout the Amiga line). It's true that a clone AGA chipset would have to be built, but if most of the research and design were done as an open-source kind of side project it wouldn't be impossible. Some of the enhancements would be a fairly simple matter, too- it would be very cheap to throw in an audio mixer and IDE interface. It could also be made modular, with a central board having all the essentials for every machine that plugs into a simple extra board specific to each case having a variety of slots and ports.
It's also sort of been done before (there was a clone motherboard made for the A1000 called the Phoenix (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/a1000phoenix.html)). It wouldn't be any sort of high-speed scream machine or anything, just a slightly enhanced replacement for old and failing equipment. Think an Amiga equivalent of the C-One, but with nowhere near the C-One's level of crazy enhancements.
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And where is the point?
680x0 is expensive but slow. Without custom chips it is not (classic) Amiga, but on the other hand AGA chipset is already slow, poor and unavailable. Really, AGA chips can't be produced anymore and AGA emulation in BoXer never worked IIRC.
Get x86 box, install WinUAE and you have new Amiga.
(Or buy a *** :lol:)
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@Methanoid:
I have them in stock as do other dealers.
The "official" Pegasos website is not offering boards for sale because production capacity is all used up. It doesn't mean you can't buy one, just Genesi aren't in the business of taking preorders. They'll be back available later.
In the meanwhile, pegasos.co.uk, ggsdata.se and a couple of others have systems in stock.
If you're in the USA, Magnetic Systems keep advertising on the front page, how can you miss them?
Neko
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@jeffimix:
Expensive circuitry + low production volume = higher prices.
The Amiga-specific flicker fixers and even the cheaper scandoublers are still pricey for both of the above.
Buying one from a shelf (which won't directly connect to Amiga RGB out, or over the Lisa chip) at your local Fry's for an XBox obviously is going to be a bit cheaper - but you'll have to solder yourself up a custom connector and so on.
Neko
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For the sake of nostalgia, it would be cool to be able to run MOS or OS4.0 on classic hardware, through CPU accelerators such as BPPC, CSPPC, and especially SharkPPC (assuming it wasn't vapor), but designing something other than add-ons (e.g. PCI busboards and similar stuff) for existing C= made motherboards, let alone new Amiga systems that have the custom native chipset upgraded to today's standards, would be nothing else than financial suicide for the company or person that attempts it. It probably would be possible in theory, but there's absolutely no reason WHY anyone should invest millions and millions of $$$ to do it.
Pegasos and AOne have been optimised perfectly as far as realistically creating the Amiga feel as much as it is possible at this point in a new piece of hardware, for a reasonable price, and being architecturally different than PeeCees but not to the extreme like the custom chipset of the classics was, so that cost of manufacturing wouldn't be over the top, which is important if we wanna be able to easily use the existing standards in expansion hardware.
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Personally I like the idea of screwing around with alternate realities for my classic Amiga. I think taking out boards and trying combinations and such...different cases but the same guts...Think about a hot rod or even a restoration job on a 1955 Willys pickup. You toss in a modern V8, better brakes, better music and tires....it still looks like a Willys, still handles like one, and still qualifies as a Willys. I have a vanilla A2000 that someday soon I'm gonna gut it and rearrange the parts in some kind of crazy ass way, maybe in a wooden chest or even an old classic radio from the '30s....but leave it essentially an A2000 so my daughter can play Jet Set Billy at normal speed, or only slightly accelerated. It's fun, it's creative and the legend lives on!
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Methanoid wrote:
Q1: How hard would it be to take a PCI design LIKE Mediator/Prometheus and put that in for 2 slots?
Building in the PCI controller wouldn`t be that much work (assuming you can license the Mediator or Prometheus logic), but I doubt you`d end up with a MiniITX board by the time you`ve positioned all the FPGAs and the 2 PCI slots.
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Why not put a new AmigaOne into your old A2000 case and have the hotrod, with UAE for playing old games?
There's at least one place that'll build you a new PC into an A1000 case out there ... they also do 'em in Atari 2600s, too ;-)
UAE works for using the old stuff, but Pegasos and A1 are the only feasable new designs, if the other ideas (Walker, boXer, the A1200 on a PCI card) were feasable they would have reached production, all had enough funding to get all the hard work done. I really wanted one of those PCI jobbies with an 060, too!
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Although I do agree that trying to do anything with the "classic" Amiga hardware platform other than live within the "nostalgia" space would be impractical to say the least, I think some of the opinions expressed are a bit harsh.
Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to give my unbiased opinoin since I am a huge fan of the classic platform and I am still making new memories everyday on my two classic systems, but, I will try.
I can understand that some folks might think that these musings about putting old hardware in new configurations are pointless and have no basis in the reality of the off-the-shelf component based PC market of 2004. Although I can see that point, I think there is a much more important message hidden in these types of posts that speak volumes about what kind of people "Amigans" really are.
I think that if it were not for the "what if ..." attitude of people in the Amiga community and the constant influx of creative ideas flowing from Amiga users all the time over the ages, we wouldn't be here right now talking about any of this. We would all be somewhere else, doing something really pointless, like installing Windows XP or something (I think this is where the Atari ST users ended up, poor souls ...) I think there were a lot of folks in the past who have come up with some crazy ideas and been laughed at or told that it was impractical or a waste of time to think that way (Albert Einstein? Jay Minor?), but, they kept with it, and here we are ....
I apologize, I am babbling. My point is that without these kinds of questions, none of us would be here. We would all be using PC's and doing nothing in particular that is important or different or ground-breaking. Maybe the idea of making and old Amiga work in an ITX configuration isn't the most practical example, but, if it sparks an idea in someone else here to do something else wonderful and exciting that benefits the rest of the community, then I say, keep the silly, pointless, impractical ideas comgin!
Just my 2 cents, sorry for the long post.
- Mike
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The one valuable commodity that Amiga still has is Amiga OS.
There will not be any mass manufactured mass apeal hardware possiblities, as far as I can see. I'm sure Amiga supporters, myself included, would be interested in such "nostalgic" hardware solutions, but really, I don't think many others would be interested.
With the horrendas bloat in todays operating systems, would'nt it be nice to see something sleek simple and intuitive like Amiga OS for the PC? Or, on more portable hardware, such as palmtops and even perhaps the Gameboy advance? Imagine that with expansion solutions etc.. With Amiga's diverse collection of applications and software, a superportable Amiga OS device would be great. That's my idea.
Something the size of a GBA that not only plays games but does everything a classic Amiga would.
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would'nt it be nice to see something sleek simple and intuitive like Amiga OS for the PC?
Like Aros? (http://www.aros.org/) :-)
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I recently purchased a Toshiba PocketPC and I was thinking how wonderful it would be to even have a version of WinUAE that ran on that platform.
The PocketPC has a 300Mhz processor in it and tons of memory. I don't think there would be any issue at all playing old Amiga games on it.
It would be nice to jump on the subway in the morning, with my PocketPC in my hand playing GODS or R-Type II or Datastorm.
Hmmmm ...
- Mike
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AROS is a wonderfull effort, but I was thinking a more native port of classic Amiga OS.
As it stands, AROS is a kind of an OS Wrapper for Linux.
A big company interested in Amiga OS technology for their portable devices.. say Palm? thay had a fleeting interest once. That would really expediate development.
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Hmmm .....
I wonder what would be involved in a port of WinUAE to the PocketPC or PalmOS platforms? It is an idea with some merit I think.
Thanks,
- Mike
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drwho wrote:
Hmmm .....
I wonder what would be involved in a port of WinUAE to the PocketPC or PalmOS platforms? It is an idea with some merit I think.
Thanks,
- Mike
indeed, that would be sweet...
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GreggBz wrote:
AROS is a wonderfull effort, but I was thinking a more native port of classic Amiga OS.
As it stands, AROS is a kind of an OS Wrapper for Linux.
A big company interested in Amiga OS technology for their portable devices.. say Palm? thay had a fleeting interest once. That would really expediate development.
AROS has nothing to do with Linux!!! :roll:
Check out http://www.aros.org and understand what it is...
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I guess he was thinking of Amithlon, easy to get confused unless you've read up on them both ;-)
Plenty of people come back after a break from Amigas and see there's a whole bunch of stuff going on - thing is apart from UAE none of them have anything to do with the old A500 shoot 'em ups that most associate with the word 'Amiga'. It takes alot of trawling around to find out what it's all about, and get your head around the current Amiga-related world which revolves around serious work, internet and 3D games now!
UAE is technically proficient enough to make ANY 68k related hardware project a non-starter (I mean, come on - like OS 3.9 at faster than 060 speeds in software alone isn't enough?), and while it's nice to dream the world /has/ just moved on ... even the (non-emulated) Amiga world!
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I guess it depends upon your perspective, and I'm not terribly fond of emulators. There's something distinctly unsatisfying about turning a reasonably fast computer into a pitifully slow one, which is what happens to a PowerPC running UAE. A number of you are claiming fantastic performance. I can only assume that is because of optimisations unique to WinUAE. I have seen worse examples, such as a 1 GHz G4 barely emulating a Macintosh Plus (8 MHz 68000) with Mini vMac. While most of the emulators I've run into do a great job with video, audio support is disappointing. Problems range from emulator X not supporting audio, at all, on Unix implementation Y to timing problems distorting the audio.
The other issue is hardware upgrades. If I want a faster Amiga, I can throw an add-on board into my A2000. If I want ethernet, presumably I can find something which suits my needs. If I want faster emulation, I have to buy a new computer. If I want to add ethernet support in emulation, I have to wait for somebody to add that feature to the emulator. (While I know how to program, I'm not much of a programmer.)
Needless to say, in my books a hardware Amiga is much more interesting -- even if it is based on the 680x0. As for PowerPC based Amigas: I will look at the AmigaOne and Pegasos when the opportunity avails itself. But I want to see one in the flesh. Most of the descriptions and screenshots are woefully inadequeate.
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I'm guessing that a lot of the substance of AROS is re-engineered linux. Nothing wrong with that, but it's certianly is'nt using the old code from Amiga OS 3.1. I did read the instalation and FAQ pages at the site some time ago, (They mention Linux/FreeBSD a lot)
I just downloaded and burned the boot ISO, and tried it out. Yes, it's nothing like Linux. But wait.. and Xbox is nothing like a PC either.
I'm not supper educated about it here, I don't know, I only tried it once. I did read up on it though.. and from what I understand they are using linux and the code from linux to expediate development, again, nothing wrong with that.
Anyway, they day I can boot Workbench 3.1 on my Game Boy, that's a dream of mine, neato-torpedo. How many geeks would but an alternative operating system for their portable devices for 29.99?
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I just realized something. Quite a few posts back in this thread, someone mentioned that people weren't interrested in the topic anymore.
It's a hell of a lack of interrest that generates this many posts I guess. :-)
- Mike
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I'm the happy owner of an Amiga Access and it serves as a support unit to my main A1260 system. Play games in TV-Window on main system, so i don't have to freeze other tasks.
But time has run out for classic amiga hardware systems like that, today an x-box can emulate amiga games in such a quality that satisfy the most. I just tried UAE on x-box the other day, and was quite impressed.
But of course, there are those who likes the real thing and can notice the difference between emulated and real, even though it's a thin line.
But if someone did make an mini amiga, i'd prolly buy it anyway :)
Cheers all,
Haymigga
p.s. here's my tower btw; Pic 1 (http://haymigga.dk/Billeder/PowerTower/tower2.jpg)
pic2 (http://haymigga.dk/Billeder/PowerTower/tower3.jpg)
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Unfortunately I don't see any difference between emulating an Amiga, and booting Workbench on non-Amiga hardware - there would be if there was some magic way to run 68k code on an x86, but only on a speed basis. The hardware would be a PC, and it would behave like an Amiga (as AROS does) ... note that I'm not talking about booting from an Amiga-on-a-card installed in a PC.
Running UAE on my work laptop Pentium3 1200MHz can blow my 25MHz '040 A3000 out of the water on processor heavy apps, never mind anything else. Audio and Ethernet support is fine, and as stated elsewhere there's no reason you can't replace the Windows shell with UAE in 'GUI bypass' mode, and just use your PC as an Amiga. WinUAE is now the lead version BTW, so yes, it's ahead of even the Unix version. Macs have a 68k emulation layer for old apps in the OS anyway, so I don't know why another emulator might run quite so ineffectually ...
PCs are cheap enough that upgrading the processor & MB for more emulating speed isn't a big deal (the rest is easy to make as quick as the fastest Amiga extras), IMO theres only four reasons to be using a classic Amiga right now - to access old floppy disks, to use the raw 68k speed of a high flying '060, to access PPC programs, or for the love of it. I have my A3000 for the first and fourth reasons.
Oh, and of course there's if you want to use a Toaster!
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@GreggBz
I'm guessing that a lot of the substance of AROS is re-engineered linux.
No, not like that.. Aros may be developed on Linux boxes and runs hosted on a Linux or as a standalone OS.. It's the closest thing to an X86 Amiga OS we have.. And it's getting better everyday it seems.. Who knows, a full workin Amiga X86 OS in 2005 :D
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misspost, pls delete.
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Off the top of my head:
Amiga classic rocks.
New amigas with their os's will/does probably too.
What upsets some classic users, like me,
is that new amigas use the amiga name
to get publicity, and so 'we' feel
that they should return the favour
by supporting classic users.
Or so I think...
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In a way, I agree with this opinion.
It's kind of a double edged sword really, on the one hand, when I see the "new" Amiga's I don't see what makes them Amiga's at all. Maybe OS4 will change my view of this.
On the other hand, it is nice that the name 'Amiga' gets the exposure that it does from these new machines.
Although, aside from all of this, in reality, I don't expect, nor do I think that it is practical, for anyone to support the classic hardware.
I think that I am most pleased that this community is here, no matter what happens. Plus, ebay and other outlets have provided me with a wealth of "new old stock" to play with that I could have never afforded when I first started with the Amiga.
- Mike
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I'm guessing that a lot of the substance of AROS is re-engineered linux. Nothing wrong with that, but it's certianly is'nt using the old code from Amiga OS 3.1. I did read the instalation and FAQ pages at the site some time ago, (They mention Linux/FreeBSD a lot)
It's its own stand alone OS, nothing to do with Linux!
(From where do you get that idea?)
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OK, My inital reply in this thread was wrong, but not entirely.
I read this,
From the AROS Homepage (http://www.aros.org/documentation/users/using.php#an-operating-system-in-an-operating-system)
"AROS can run natively on the Intel and Amiga computers, but not quite as good as it runs on Linux. AROS library functions are made to run under Linux first, internally using Linux kernel and library calls. This way a programmer has got the opportunity to bother about the implementation of the whole system first, and to bother about the technical details in a later stadium. People are currently working on making the "native" AROS more impressive. The results are very impressive and it is perfectly possible to use AROS as a real (and only) Operating system on an IBM PC compatible machine."
This is where i get that idea.
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I for one would like to see a classic Amiga in a ATX or Mini-ATX form. One that included ethernet, USB, enough room for a gig of memory and other stuff to keep from having to upgrade it. If a company needed chips, I would even give up my A4000s, A3000s, CD32 and A500s for the chips as long as I would get a couple ATX or mini-ATX boards in return.
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AROS developers are probably using Linux code, either verbatim or as reference. They would be foolish not to, as it seems awfully difficult to track down proper documentation for a lot of hardware.
I tried the AROS boot floppy. It looked like a fine start. Of course, it may have looked a lot better if I had a CD burner to try out a more complete distribution. ;-) Alas, I'm away from my machine -- which is why I had access to an i386 in the first place!
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I collect classic air-cooled VW's ,as well as owning a turbo New Beetle, and this argument over "clasic" vs. modern Amigas is very similiar to the one in the Volkswagen community. Some people think any water-cooled Volkswagen is not a "real" VW, while many people use a modern VW for everyday commuting, and their classic Beetle for "motoring' for pleasure. The argument whether it is "practical" to run a '66 VW or an A1000 is ridiculous; practicality is not the point-newer is not always >"better". Bulding a "new"' classic Amiga is like hot-rodding a classic car- you might not want to drive it to work every day , but that does not mean it is not worthy in its own right.
I know "jurasic Camper" likes classic VW's , ( I have a bus too!) . If there are any other VW/Amiga ownerws out there I'd like to hear from you.
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Hi everyone,
Gee, I was thinking the opposite. Making 'Classic' Amigas run newer machines like a P4. That's what I used to believe the Amiga was capable then. One example was the A500 expansion(can't remember what was it) that had a 286pc expansion so you could run MuStardDOS v6.xx then. Or a certian bridge board for A2,3,4000 where you have 586 HW or Emplant boards. They used to say they'd just(probably) need time to build HW/ROM(?) for SEGA, SNES, C64, but unfortunately didn't(Correct me if i'm wrong). Read it on an ADs back then on Amazing Computing. Now that's >'hot rodding' an Amiga.
>May lightning strike me< :-P
:lol: :lol:
Good day to all Amigans!:-D
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Ill tell you all what we need.
All i want for my A1200 desktop is
A video card cybergfx capable that sits in the original
case. thats all.
is that really hard to make?>
i would pay $400 bucks for it.
yes this would be great.
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Guys... the 'classic Amiga' is now dead. It's official.
I don't see why there are so many trying to bring back the old 68000 platform. They'll probably want to PowerPC upgrades for it next...
If you want a funky alternative platform, one exists. And, it's fast and modern.
Why not buy a Pegasos! It runs any of my Amiga software that actually matters, plus it works with a crap load of standard hardware.
You're old Amiga's are not going return back to life any time soon. Get over it! :-)
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Guys... the 'classic Amiga' is now dead. It's official.
Hey, no squashing peoples' dreams, here! ;-)
Still, do you really want a machine based on the same hardware, or just a system that looks like the original Amiga? OS4 looks enough like OS3 for my tastes (or rather, a bit too much).
If you want a machine that will run old Amiga software without emulation, you're asking for trouble. Even if you de-solder some original chips from a real Amiga and build a new motherboard, getting compatibility will be a real pain. Note the number of Amiga apps and games that don't even run on real Amigas without several reboots. :-)